How do you measure a site's digital performance?

1- Measurement tools and methods

User experience (UX/UI) evaluation is now essential to ensuring the quality of online platforms. The ultimate goal is to guarantee a smooth, consistent, and seamless digital experience across all channels.

How should this assessment be carried out? What methods are available? What tools can be used? These questions are answered here, where relevant methods are outlined.

I. User test

To begin with, why not ask your users for their opinions about your platform? That is precisely the purpose of user testing: to have a participant perform a series of tasks on a digital tool. In practice, these tasks correspond to a user scenario (e.g., searching, comparing, adding to cart, paying), which allows you to identify specific points of friction.

You have the opportunity to observe and question their interactions in order to identify any problems related to navigation, comprehension, or ergonomics.

These tests generally last around 60 minutes and prove effective with just 5 users to detect more than 80% of UX/UI issues!

II. Web analytics solutions

For ongoing evaluation of user experience, it makes sense to rely on web analytics tools. While Google Analytics remains the most widely used tool, there are many alternatives, such as Matomo. These tools can be used to explore various aspects, including:

- The origin of your traffic

- The characteristics of your site visitors

- The pages that generate the most conversions, as well as those that hinder your performance ...

This gives you the opportunity to continuously improve your site! In addition to general tools, specific solutions focus on particular elements, such as traffic analysis (Wordstream) or keyword analysis (Alexa). You can equip yourself with a complete range of tools to guarantee a comprehensive evaluation of your user experience (UX/UI)!

II. Ergonomics evaluation grids

If you're thinking of carrying out a preliminary evaluation of your platform's ergonomics, it's important to know that a number of evaluation grids are available online, and can be used as templates. These grids enable you to evaluate your platform according to specific criteria such as :

• The consistency of your content structure
• The experience on mobile devices
• Detection of incorrect links
• Your site's loading times

You can use established references, such as the Bastien and Scapin criteria, to create your own evaluation grids.

III. Clickstreams and heat maps

You can also rely on more precise tools to evaluate your users' behavior on your platform.

• Clickstream tools help you examine user behavior by analyzing the routes they take through your site.
• You can also use heatmaps to reveal areas of interest on an interface. Solutions such as Hotjar or Smartlook are available for this purpose.

This allows you to significantly improve the relevance and layout of your information.

IV. UX/UI audit

Although the evaluation grids mentioned above can provide you with a decent assessment, carrying out professional audits remains the best approach for obtaining objective opinions and relevant recommendations for improvement. During a UX/UI audit, experts examine aspects such as :

• The user-friendliness of your tool
• The quality of the content
• Information presentation and organization
• The user journey
• Available functions

As part of this professional assessment, your information architecture and interfaces are thoroughly analyzed. You will receive a detailed report with concrete recommendations for implementation.

V. Accessibility assessment

It's a common misconception that only user experience (UX/UI) audits are appropriate for assessing user experience. It's vital to assess the accessibility of your website. Web accessibility is of paramount importance in user experience, as it ensures that content and platforms are accessible to all, regardless of their skills or abilities. If you'd like to assess your site's level of accessibility, call in the experts to carry out an audit. They will examine both technical aspects, such as HTML tags, and semantic aspects, such as the clarity of wording.

Did you know that Libéo is renowned for its expertise in user experience (UX/UI) and Web accessibility? This group is at your disposal to help you carry out these audits!

VI. SEO (search engine optimization) audit

Search engine optimization (SEO) is also a quality indicator for your platform. Regular SEO audits can be very useful! It will help you improve your position in search engine results. Since your position is closely linked to the relevance of your content and compliance with specific guidelines, such as the use of tags, you'll end up improving the overall performance of your user experience.

VII. A/B experimentation

In the Web world, crucial decisions have to be made. When you find yourself weighing up the pros and cons of two calls-to-action or two images, A/B testing can be a valuable tool in helping you make the right choice. These tests enable you to evaluate the impact of a modification on a specific element in relation to the achievement of a given objective. In concrete terms, you expose two different versions of your interface, modifying one element at a time, then analyze their performance to determine which is the most effective, and possibly adopt it permanently. Tools such as Convertize or Optimizely are available to simplify this process.

VIII. Internet surveys

To assess the quality of the experience you offer your users, you can integrate surveys directly on your site, particularly at key moments. If you run an e-commerce site, it may be appropriate to invite your customers to give feedback on their shopping experience after completing an order. Survey tools such as Typeform are particularly well suited to measuring various aspects of the user experience. Off-site, surveys can be used to assess the quality of your marketing activities, such as newsletters.

IX. Oculometry (difficult to set up)

Although these methods are more complex to implement, and often require collaboration with external entities, collecting physiological data can be an excellent way of assessing your user experience in a virtually objective way. Eye tracking plays an essential role in this approach. This technique evaluates the way users look at a page, confirming, for example, the effectiveness of an ad's placement. Eye tracking is invaluable for detecting friction points in the user journey, even when users are not fully aware of these problems. To implement this method, have access to state-of-the-art tools, or collaborate with research centers such as HEC Montréal's Tech3Lab.

2- Key performance indicators for websites

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are essential elements in assessing the success of your website. They enable you to analyze your audience's behavior, identify areas for adjustment and capitalize on your strengths. The KPIs you need to track depend on your site's specific objectives, so you need to choose them according to the nature of your business.

I. Session

A session refers to an Internet user's visit to your website for at least 30 minutes without interrupting their activity or closing their browser. You can access session data in the "Audience" and then "Overview" sections of Google Analytics. You can also measure the number of pages viewed per session and the average session duration, providing valuable information about your visitors' behavior.

II. User

To better understand your online audience, you can measure the number of unique users. Distinguish this metric from the previous indicator: a user may visit your site several times over a given period, generating multiple sessions.

III. Drop-out rates

For e-commerce sites, the abandonment rate is an essential indicator. It can be subdivided into registration abandonment, shopping cart abandonment and delivery abandonment. These rates can be influenced by excessive pricing or inadequate design of the conversion tunnel.

To go further, it is useful to analyze the purchase journey as a whole in order to identify where and why users drop out.

IV. Bounce rate

The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing a single page. It is calculated by dividing the number of bounces by the number of sessions. A high bounce rate indicates that visitors leave your site without exploring further. This indicator is of crucial importance for e-commerce sites. On the other hand, it's common to observe a high bounce rate for a blog, as visitors arrive, read an article and then leave the site.

V. Share of sessions on different media (mobile/tablet/desktop)

Google Analytics gives you a breakdown of your audience according to the type of screen used to visit your website: mobile, tablet or computer. This information guides you in your decisions, for example, to adopt a "mobile first" approach if a large proportion of your readers use smartphones.

VI. Gender breakdown - Male/Female users

Google Analytics provides you with information on the gender breakdown of your audience, helping you to determine the proportion of men and women browsing your website. This data can be useful in guiding your editorial choices, particularly for an e-commerce site.

VII. Viewed pages

In the "Behavior" and then "Overview" sections of your Google Analytics dashboard, you can find out which pages of your website are visited most often. This analysis enables you to identify your most popular content. For example, for a blog, you can determine which articles generate the most interest, compare them and capitalize on their features for future content.

VIII. Share of chat sessions or chatbot

To understand how your audience interacts on your website, you can measure the proportion of sessions involving a chat or chatbot compared to "classic" sessions. This information is invaluable, especially if you're considering replacing under-performing information pages with a conversational agent.

IX. Number of comments or shares per article

For blogs, the number and quality of comments can help you identify which articles or topics generate the most engagement from your readers. The number of shares on social networks can be indicative of the popularity of your articles.

X. Newsletter subscribers or opt-out rate

If your site offers a newsletter, it's important to monitor the associated KPIs to assess its effectiveness. Most newsletter software lets you measure open rates and subscriber numbers. In addition, you can evaluate the abandonment rate during the sign-up process by comparing the number of views on the sign-up page with the number of views on the delivery choice page. A high abandonment rate may indicate that your registration form is too long, or asks for information that visitors don't want to provide.

3- The 2Be-FFICIENT perspective on digital performance

With the user experience at the heart of its approach, this company has been designing monitoring solutions for over two decades, and these have been adopted by some of the world's largest corporations. These solutions have enabled its customers to improve their own customer satisfaction thanks to a seamless digital experience.

The 2Be-FFICIENT vision

With the proliferation of digital services, security and reliability have become essential pillars of user confidence. The slightest anomaly can have major consequences for customer satisfaction, revenues and a company's reputation. Against this backdrop, 2Be-FFICIENT helps companies to maintain an optimal user experience at all times.

His motivations

Our culture of service guarantees personalized support, thanks to our highly responsive, high-quality customer support. Our partnership with our customers is reflected in our ability to take their needs into account, thus ensuring the constant evolution of our solutions.

Their expertise and adaptability

The 2Be-FFICIENT solution meets all supervision needs, whether simple or complex. The company offers monitoring of the user experience, whatever the platform used (mobile, tablet, desktop or any other type of interface), browsers and operating systems, without disrupting its customers' infrastructure. As an external solution, the automatons developed by 2Be-FFICIENT behave exactly like users, veritable mystery shoppers using all the functionalities of websites or mobile applications. Pro-active, they can anticipate any incident or slowdown.

Over the past two decades, the team has continually adapted to the rapid evolution of the digital world.